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Sli or Xfire

ChrisLandin

ChrisLandin

ChrisLandin

Associate
Joined
10 Jun 2009
Posts
2,225
Location
Darlington
Hiya all.

Currently I have 2 x XFX GTX 275's in sli and im building a new rig that is going to run 2 x XFX 5770's in crossfire. My question here is which set up is the best, the sli or xFire?? Im a total novice with the Ati cards so I have no idea so please advise, I have to say though I would just have the total facts as opposed to any fanboys out there. Cheers.
 
When im asking for the facts im meaning performance wise. The mobo I will be using for the xFire rig only has 2 slots for the Gpu's so I wont be adding an nvidia number for physx etc.
 
The SLI system is going to be faster by a decent margin for most DX9 and 10 games - but it will be lacking DX11 features.
 
Your best off with the fastest single card you can afford.

What motherboard do you have in mind ?


Dual video cards set-ups are the work of the devil.
 
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The mobo I have is a Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS5. I managed to pick this up today with 4gb of corsair 1066 ram and a Q9550 for £80 from a local exchange store. Im asking because ive not got to much experience with building pc's and I was wondering if I would get better performance with these new components as opposed to my current ones, because if so I was going to sell mine on and use the new parts and get a couple of the 5770's and Xfire them.
 
jigger said:
Thats a great price.

I would use one of your 275's and wait for the 5870 and 5970 prices to settle.
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That would be insane...

Unfortunatly its a bit of a quandry... Q9550 + 275GTX SLI is still extremely good performance... but lack of DX11 kinda pre-empts the long term usefulness... you could try the unofficial SLI patch with the P45 board and the 2x275GTX tho.

I would deff. keep the Q9550 tho with whatever setup you go for.

nVidia cards will work on the P45 fine - but it won't support SLI officially and may or may not unofficially - you'd be limited to a single card which would be a massive performance climb down if your running any decent resolution.
 
No since Nvidia only started licensing SLI on intel chips with the x58 chipset.

You can make up some of the performance gap by ocing the 5770s to 1ghz core and 1350 -> 1400 memory. They can easily do this on stock cooling, will still draw a let less power than the 275s.

There are a few teething issues with the drivers that will hopefully be sorted with the 9.12s....
 
Rroff said:
That would be insane...

Unfortunatly its a bit of a quandry... Q9550 + 275GTX SLI is still extremely good performance... but lack of DX11 kinda pre-empts the long term usefulness... you could try the unofficial SLI patch with the P45 board and the 2x275GTX tho.

I would deff. keep the Q9550 tho with whatever setup you go for.

nVidia cards will work on the P45 fine - but it won't support SLI officially and may or may not unofficially - you'd be limited to a single card which would be a massive performance climb down if your running any decent resolution.
Click to expand...

Why would that be insane ?
 
He has two systems and a spare gtx275 which is hardly a slow card. The 5770 is a side grade at best.

The 5870 and 5970 are currently massively over priced and due to fall by a huge amount.

SLI and Crossfire are poor value and problematic.
 
He has 2x 275GTX in SLI already on a 780i board... I don't think he has the 5770 already... I'm assuming the 2nd system is incomplete and doesn't have a GPU, etc. atm.

SLI/CF are only poor value if you don't buy the correct cards* or don't run at high enough res/detail settings to need them... most of the problems with them have long ago been ironed out aslong as nVidia/ATI keep up with the testing to make sure profiles are available if needed there shouldn't be any problem.

* as an example 8800GT SLI was great value for money as it was faster than the 280GTX and almost half the price...
 
Rroff keep it coming buddy im right on track here. At the moment I dont have gpu's for the new mobo, cpu and ram and as it is a xfire board thats why I posted the question. I mean I love my nvidia setup, its great. I play all games on a good resolution at great frame rates. Maybe I should swap out my qx6700 and replace it with the q9550 and keep my sli setup and just flog my old cpu and new mobo and ram!! Another reason why I asked was because I thought I might be able to make a few quid selling the second rig on the bay!!
 
Whenever possible I'd take the P45 over the 780i board any day... but its hard to beat 2x 275 in SLI without spending a lot of money for a relatively small performance increase at the moment.

I swapped out a Q6600 @ 3.6gig for a Q9550 thats clocked to 3.825gig and it nicely rounds the system out, with better min fps and a steadier average than before - also boots a little quicker.

QX7600 your not gonna get as much money selling now as its kinda worth being a QX and all but that and a decent P45 board should still make a fair penny back.
 
Cheers pal for your reply. You posted quite a few things on threads ive put up and your opinion is always greatly appreciated. I actually posted a while back hoping you would see it and reply, I even mentioned you in the thread haha. So sorry for being a pain but with all the components I have at my disposal at the moment which is quite a few what do you think i should go with??
 
Having 200 series SLI myself I'm somewhat loath to suggest moving away from it at this point... but the most sensible objective route would be to keep the Q9550, P45 board and selling the rest to fund a 5850 or 5870 with an eye to adding a second one later if needed.

I wouldn't reccomend going 5770 crossfire from 275 SLI.
 
Cheers for that. Im just a bit wary to be honest. I mean I paid a lot of cash for all the stuff in my current rig I mean the 2 275's were a fortune alone and i probably wont get anywhere near that when selling them, then its the whole building a new system again piece, which is fun but is time consuming as well. I have heard that P45 boards do clock really well and seeing as though the Q9550 is 2.8ghz at stock im sure I could sqeeze a little more performance out of it. Hmmm decisions decisions!!!!
 
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